1946 – BIRTH OF JANET YELLEN, CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM
(2005, speech in San Francisco) – Yellen argued against deflating the housing bubble because – “arguments against trying to deflate a bubble outweigh those in favor of it” and predicted that the housing bubble “could be large enough to feel like a good-sized bump in the road, but the economy would likely be able to absorb the shock”.
(2010, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearing) “For my own part, I did not see and did not appreciate what the risks were with securitization, the credit ratings agencies, the shadow banking system, the S.I.V.’s — I didn’t see any of that coming until it happened.”
So, what is Ms. Yellen and her colleagues at the Fed today not seeing and won’t “until it happens?”

AUGUST 14

1989 – DEATH OF ROBERT B. ANDERSON, SECRETARY OF TREASURY UNDER PRESIDENT EISENHOWER
“When a bank makes a loan it simply adds to the borrowers’ deposit account in the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken from anyone else’s deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by anyone. It’s new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower.”

2009 – PUBLICATION OF “WHY STATES GOING INTO THE BANKING BUSINESS WOULD BE A DISTRACTION, NOT A SOLUTION TO THEIR FISCAL PROBLEMS”, BY JAMIE WALTON
“You don’t solve a problem with more of the problem.

This scheme for states to go into the banking business would only ‘serve to protect’ the status quo. The ‘proposal’ completely fails to confront the main problem identified by all serious monetary reforms: ‘fractional reserve’ banking. Instead, it actually endorses and sanctions this vicious and destructive process, by suggesting that State governments engage in it…”

1932 – BIRTH OF GABRIEL KOLKO, HISTORIAN, AUTHOR OF THE “TRIUMPH OF CONSERVATISM: A REINTERPRETATION OF AMERICAN HISTORY”
“To precisely what was [Woodrow] Wilson committed? I am for big business and against the trusts,’ but he could not define the major difference between the two, and he never gave the matter serious thought.”

NOTE: Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, establishing the Federal Reserve System, the largely private/corporate central banking system in the US.

AUGUST 18

1850 – DEATH OF HONORE DE BALZAC, FRENCH NOVELIST AND PLAYWRIGHT
“The final battle for Christianity will be over the money problem, and until that is solved there can be no universal application of Christianity.”

AUGUST 19

2003 – DEATH OF DONALD WINN, ASSISTANT TO THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM
“The Federal Reserve system pays the U.S. Treasury 020.60 per thousand notes –a little over 2 cents each– without regard to the face value of the note. Federal Reserve Notes, incidentally, are the only type of currency now produced for circulation. They are printed exclusively by the Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and the $20.60 per thousand price reflects the Bureau’s full cost of production. Federal Reserve Notes are printed in 01, 02, 05, 10, 20, 50, and 100 dollar denominations only; notes of 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000 denominations were last printed in 1945.”

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Why this calendar? Many people have questions about the root causes of our economic problems. Some questions involve money, banks and debt. How is money created? Why do banks control its quantity? How has the money system been used to liberate (not often) and oppress (most often) us? And how can the money system be “democratized” to rebuild our economy and society, create jobs and reduce debt? Our goal is to inform, intrigue and inspire through bite size weekly postings listing important events and quotes from prominent individuals (both past and present) on money, banking and how the money system can help people and the planet. We hope the sharing of bits of buried history will illuminate monetary and banking issues and empower you with others to create real economic and political justice. This calendar is the original project of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee. Adele Looney, Phyllis Titus, Donna Schall, Leah Davis, Alice Francini, Deb Jose and Greg Coleridge helped in its development. It is currently updated by Greg Coleridge. Please forward this to others and encourage them to subscribe. To subscribe/unsubscribe or to comment on any entry, email monetarycalendar@yahoo.com
To see the calendar year-to-date, go to https://monetarycalendar.wordpress.com/
A second historical calendar, the REAL Democracy History Calendar, in many ways complements this calendar. For information, go to https://realdemocracyhistorycalendar.wordpress.com/about/

Both have surely violated the public trust. Why the difference in punishment? For one, cash. For another, the law.

I doubt Tamela Lee possessed the personal wealth to drag legal proceedings far enough along with the best lawyer(s) money can buy to negotiate a lesser verdict while William Lager lawyered up to use every legal maneuver possible to avoid responsibility. The law, too, is a factor. Lee’s crime was clear and blatant bribery. Lager has used legalized bribery (e.g. massive political campaign “contributions” over many years) to buy/rent/lease/retain public officials to change laws and regulations beneficial to his inept online charter school. The corporate form is also a helpful shield to insulate in many cases jail time. Laws and verdicts which often maximize fines to corporations (as well as the rich) to a percentage of whatever amount of money was unlawfully acquired invite unethical actions. Stealing $100 knowing that the maximum punishment/fine is $20 simply invites stealing.

The damage Lager has done to children through his phony school and to democracy through corrupting the political system are unconscionable. Fraud charges should be pursued. Significant prison time for Lager and revoking ECOT’s corporate charter can’t repair the damage already done, but they would provide at least some deterrent to prevent future irresponsibility and criminality.

1893 – BIRTH OF WRIGHT PATMAN, DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN FROM TEXAS, CHAIRMAN OF US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON BANKING & CURRENCY (1965-75)
“I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiot system to continue.”
“The Constitution of the U.S. says that Congress shall coin money and regulate its value. That does not mean that the Congress of the U.S., composed of the duly elected representatives of the people, have a right to farm out the great privilege to the banking system, until today a few powerful bankers control the issuance & distribution of money — something that the Constitution of the U.S. says Congress shall do.”

AUGUST 7

1946 – FIRST COIN IN THE U.S. AUTHORIZED BEARING THE PORTRAIT OF AN AFRICAN AMERICAN
The coin was the Booker T. Washington Silver Half Dollar Commemorative Coin. Commemorative Coins, designed to honor special people, place, events and institutions, aren’t usually minted for circulation even though they are legal tender. The coin was designed by Isaac Scott Hathaway, the first African American man to design a U.S. coin with a African American face on it. He later designed the George Washington Carver coin.

2015 – SECOND NIGHT OF THE OPENING OF “HAMILTON” ON BROADWAY
The rap musical opened last night at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. Inspired by the 2004 biography “Alexander Hamilton” by Ron Chernow, the musical won 11 Tony Awards in 2016, including best musical and book of a musical. It lauds the contributions of one of nation’s “founding fathers,” and first Treasury Secretary.

There was another side to Hamilton that the rap musical didn’t glorify – his effort to privatize money creation in the new country from We the People to financiers through the establishment of the First Bank of the United States, an entity Thomas Jefferson called “one of the most deadly hostile against the principles of our Constitution,” which, “in a critical moment might overthrow the government.”

The timing of the musical release took place ironically when awareness was growing of the modern dangers to private banks controlling the printing and distribution as debt of our nation’s money and calls by some to replace Hamilton on the $10 bill.

AUGUST 8

1916 – BIRTH OF HERBERT STEIN, FORMER CHAIRMAN OF PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISORS
Stein’s law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
[Sounds like our current debt-based money system – an unsustainable system which can only continue if more debt is issued, which happens when banking corporations issue loans and purchase treasury bonds, bills and notes]

AUGUST 9

1836 – BIRTH OF ALEXANDER DEL MAR, AMERICAN POLITICAL ECONOMIST, HISTORIAN, NUMISMATIST, AUTHOR, DIRECTOR US BUREAU OF STATISTICS
“As a rule political economists…don’t take the trouble to study the history of money; it is much easier to imagine it and to deduce the principles of this imaginary knowledge.”
“[T]he State alone had the right to issue money and to decide of what substances its symbols should be made, whether of gold, silver, brass or paper. Whatever the State declared to be money was money.”
“Lexington and Concord were trivial acts of resistance, which chiefly concerned those who took part in them and which might have been forgiven; but the creation and circulation of bills of credit by revolutionary assemblies in Massachusetts and Philadelphia were the acts of a whole people, and coming, as they did, upon the heels of the strenuous efforts made by the Crown to suppress paper money in America, they constituted acts of defiance so contemptuous and insulting to the Crown, that forgiveness was thereafter impossible…Thus the bills of credit of this era, which ignorance and prejudice have attempted to belittle into the mere instruments of a reckless financial policy, were really the standard of the Revolution. They were more than this: they were the Revolution itself.”

1944 – BIRTH OF WILLIAM ENGDAHL, AUTHOR OF “GODS OF MONEY”
“Since 1945, American hegemony, or more accurately an American imperium, has rested on two firm pillars of support! The 1st pillar has been the role of the dollar as unchallenged world reserve currency in which New York’s Wall St. is the center of global finance, the ‘banker to the world’. The 2nd has been the role of the Pentagon and the unchallenged dominance of American military power.”

1989 – FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS REFORM RECOVERY AND ENFORCEMENT ACT (FIRREA) ENACTED
The law passed in response to the 1980’s savings and loan crisis – in which. FIRREA created the Resolution Trust Corporation, which bailed out failed institutions primarily through taxation. It also shifted regulatory authority from the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to the Office of Thrift Supervision within the Department of the Treasury.
It should be noted that more than more than a thousand felony convictions followed the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s and early 1990s. There have been virtually no investigations, let alone convictions, of those responsible for the 2007-2008 global financial meltdown triggered by US financial institutions.

AUGUST 10

1863 – BIRTH OF ALFRED OWEN CROSIER, PROMINENT OHIO ATTORNEY AND AUTHOR
Crosier wrote widely against the power and influence held by Wall Street Bankers. Crozier wrote eight books, including The Magnet and U.S. Money vs. Corporation Currency, which served to warn the country of the replacement of the country’s currency by notes printed by private banking corporations. A wonderful display of political cartoons from his book, US Money vs. Corporations Currency is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4qQ59w4ML4

1868 – BIRTH OF PAUL WARBURG, US BANKER
Warburg guided the operations of the National Citizens League, an organization formed in 1911 with $5 million in contributions from the big New York banks (including those owned by Rockefeller and J.P Morgan) to establish an “educational fund.” The fund financed respected university professors to endorse the concept of creating a private central bank, which became the Federal Reserve Bank, created by the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.

1929 – THE FEDERAL RESERVE BEGINS TO TIGHTEN THE MONEY SUPPLY – LEADS TO GREAT DEPRESSION
The Federal Reserve sharply raises the interest rate it charges local banks to borrow money (called the “discount rate”). At the same time, it begins to sell its government securities (remember, the Fed is not part of the federal government, despite its name, but rather a largely private entity controlled by 12 reserve banks which are controlled by banks). These actions were the seeds, which led to the Great Depression – as limited money in circulation prevents business and commercial transactions from occurring.

1930- BIRTH OF GEORGE GOODMAN, AUTHOR, “THE MONEY GAME”
“[T]hose who live by numbers can also perish by them, and it is a terrifying thing to have an adding machine write an epitaph, either way.”

AUGUST 11

1943 – BIRTH OF NICOLAUS TIDEMAN, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, VIRGINIA TECH AND FORMER SENIOR ECONOMIST FOR THE PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISORS
“Money is what people make sure they have when they want to buy things. Something works as money when people expect others to accept it as payment. Sometimes money is a valuable commodity, such as gold, wampum, or packs of cigarettes. More often, especially these days, money consists of pieces of paper.
The pieces of paper that serve as money have sometimes been issued by governments and sometimes by banks…What gives paper money its value to the general public is the expectation that a party with whom many will have occasion to trade will accept the paper as the basis for crediting the person who presents it. The crediting can take the form of payment of taxes, payment of loans, payment of religious obligations, or, as with paper money issued by banks and some paper money issued by governments, the crediting can take the form of obliging the issuer to exchange the paper for some specified thing of value…
In those cases in which the crediting takes the form of obliging the issuer to exchange the paper for a specified thing of value, the paper money can be described as the record of a promise to pay a debt on demand, and if that is the only form of money, then an expansion of the money supply requires an expansion of debt. But other forms of paper money are not debt. In particular, a paper money that consists of fiat currency issued by a government, good for the payment of taxes but not otherwise guaranteed to be convertible is not debt.”

AUGUST 12

1933 – PUBLISHED REPORT, “CLOSED BANKS AND BANKING REFORM” BY CQ RESEARCHER
“The many bank failures occurring in the United States during 1930, 1931, and 1932, culminating in the closing of all banks on March 6. 1933, and the failure of many to reopen at the termination of the banking holiday caused widespread concern as to the fundamental soundness of the dual banking system and of American banking methods in general. Provision for certain radical changes in banking practice was made by the Glass-Steagall act, passed at the close of the special session of the 73rd Congress. It was generally felt, however, that a more thoroughgoing reform of the whole system was needed. In this connection, the movement toward unification of the state and federal banking systems, with possible federalization of all banks, appears to have been gaining headway. While the views of the administration on the question have not been made known, it is thought likely that the President will recommend enactment of new banking legislation by Congress at the regular session in January, 1934.”
[NOTE: A reform not made was one that was suggested by hundreds of economists of the day — to democratize money creation via what was called “The Chicago Plan,” specifically for the government to create money as an asset (not as debt which is what banks do) and 100% reserve requirement of banks (i.e. banks could only lend money that they actually possessed).

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Why this calendar? Many people have questions about the root causes of our economic problems. Some questions involve money, banks and debt. How is money created? Why do banks control its quantity? How has the money system been used to liberate (not often) and oppress (most often) us? And how can the money system be “democratized” to rebuild our economy and society, create jobs and reduce debt? Our goal is to inform, intrigue and inspire through bite size weekly postings listing important events and quotes from prominent individuals (both past and present) on money, banking and how the money system can help people and the planet. We hope the sharing of bits of buried history will illuminate monetary and banking issues and empower you with others to create real economic and political justice. This calendar is the original project of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee. Adele Looney, Phyllis Titus, Donna Schall, Leah Davis, Alice Francini, Deb Jose and Greg Coleridge helped in its development. It is currently updated by Greg Coleridge. Please forward this to others and encourage them to subscribe. To subscribe/unsubscribe or to comment on any entry, email monetarycalendar@yahoo.com
To see the calendar year-to-date, go to https://monetarycalendar.wordpress.com/
A second historical calendar, the REAL Democracy History Calendar, in many ways complements this calendar. For information, go to https://realdemocracyhistorycalendar.wordpress.com/about/

All the political cash is sickening. Am quoted in the article below, but a few points were left out: “The system of legalized bribery (e.g. campaign financing) is alive and well in Cleveland as demonstrated by Frank Jackson’s rapid rise of his campaign war chest…Legalized bribery will only end by legalizing democracy — via lower contribution limits and, ultimately, by amending the US Constitution to give voice to the needs of people and communities by abolishing the doctrines that money is constitutionally protected ‘free speech’ and corporations possess inalienable constitutional ‘personhood’ rights.”

Frank Jackson Has Raised A Whole Lot More Money Than All Other Mayoral Challengers Combined